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"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference." Winston Churchill

When I first went to big school, I went along to a parent’s evening with my Mum. During the course of the evening, a teacher told my Mum that as I was very good at English, I wouldn’t be good at Maths. As a quiet, make no fuss, trusting 11 year old, it never occurred to me to question this sweeping and frankly, unsubstantiated, statement. A teacher, an elder, said it and so it must be true.

Until recently, this “truth” followed me about. Show me a page of text that I have written and point out what you perceive to be errors and I will argue every word with you. Show me where I have written 2 + 2 = 4 and tell me it is wrong and I will take your word for it because, hey, I can’t do maths.

But...

Throughout my career, I have, for example, successfully created and managed large budgets; produced financial reports for box offices; sales reports and analysis for retail outlets; and managed cash flow forecasts for charities and businesses. And what do all these things have in common? Yep, you’ve spotted it – maths.

Now, I am never going to be the Chancellor (and indeed, why would I want to be!), but I can comfortably hold my own with most people on basic, everyday maths. I have even been known to walk around Sainsbury’s adding my shopping bill up in my head, when not being distracted by an urge for their giant cookies (the white chocolate ones - yumsk!). I am actually very good at managing figures and money.

However, any type of maths task has filled me with dread. I put off doing them as they would be “hard” and I would probably get something wrong. When I got around to doing the work, my heart would be in my boots and I would feel vaguely like “I will do the very best I can, but I can’t really do this.”

A few months ago, I was working with a client, helping them put together an income projection for a potential new project. They were very financially savvy so I was quite anxious when they were looking at the figures and I was waiting for the “you got this number wrong” comment. They put the budget down and said, “Yes, that’s about what I thought it would be. Thanks.” It was very matter of fact; they had expected me to do the figures right and that’s exactly what I had done. No fuss, no drama. We carried on with the meeting.

Afterwards,I thought about the stress and worry I had put myself through prior to the meeting about these figures. (And all the other meetings.) Had they been hard? Not particularly. Had they used calculations I had never used before? No. Had I created lots of these projections before? Yes. Then why was I worried? Because I can’t do...

Hold on a minute, who said I can’t do maths? Certainly one teacher, once, a thousand years ago. Then me every day since. But if I had been less distracted by my negative attitude, I would have noticed that I have been knocking off accurate numbers left, right and centre. So now, I have changed my attitude and inner conversation and if I notice a negative thought, I can catch It, check It and change It.

I’m Deborah and I do maths.

So what do you do successfully on a regular basis which you are convinced you can’t do?